Both running and school leadership are two of the most rewarding and challenging things I've been involved with and learnt from. I look forward to learning more through running and leading, but not always leading the running!

Friday, March 4, 2011

Background

The Summit begins. People registered come from 28 countries with the furtherest and longest travel being by delegates from Brasil. This is the 4th Learning Summit in the past two years with previous events being held in Vienna, Hong Kong and last year in Prague by Prague International School http://schoolnet.isp.cz/.
This years event is being held at the School Of The Arts in Singapore (SOTA). http://www.sota.edu.sg/ Basically SOTA is a special character school - with the goal of using the arts as a vehicle to encourage exploration and rigour across the curriculum. Students have a major (either visual arts, music, dance or theatre arts) which they spend half a day specialising in, and then explore other curricular for the other parts of the day. The school day runs from about 8:00am - 5:00pm for most students. The facilities here are amazing - the school is in the centre of the city, in one of the busiest parts of town. The Principal was given the freedom (and resourcing) in the year 2000 to design the school - from the vision, principles and curriculum outward. She then developed a 'property infrastructure' that could mirror the social infra-structure. A key goal identified by the Principal was for the school to have civic conciousness - a school to make a difference in the community and landscape of learning. She used the 'architecture of the mind' in describing another key philosophy - using the building, design and innovation as a metaphor for learning - using prior ideas to innovate, construct ideas, reconstruct, meet goals, celebrate and then start again. Interesting to reflect on - particularly given the flavour of property here. Another striking feature is the visual way the principles of the school are displayed. Very prominent and visual for all.
How visual are our key principles?